Word and picture identification : is representational parsimony possible?

• Published in: Memory & cognition Vol. 14; no. 5; pp. 398 - 408
• Main Authors: KIRSNER, K, MILECH, D, STUMPFEL, V
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Austin, TX Psychonomic Society 01.09.1986
• Subjects: Adult; Associative learning; Biological and medical sciences; Communication disorders; Cues; Form Perception; Fundamental and applied biological sciences. Psychology; Humans; Language; Memory; Pattern Recognition, Visual; Pictorial stimuli; Production and perception of written language; Psychology. Psychoanalysis. Psychiatry; Psychology. Psychophysiology; Reading; Reading skills; Semantics; Sight method; Word recognition; Short term; Facilitation; Human; Semantic relation; Word; Priming effect; Memory; Image; Visual perception; Lexicons; Reading; Language; Vision; Mnemonic recognition; Stimulus identification
• ISSN: 0090-502X; 1532-5946
• DOI: 10.3758/BF03197015

Four experiments were conducted to evaluate the proposition that although prior exposure to a printed word facilitates identification of a corresponding picture, exposure to a picture does not facilitate subsequent word recognition (Durso and Johnson, 1979). Word identification was used, rather than naming latency, in order to avoid the range limitations in adult reading data. Word identification was facilitated by intermodal priming (prior exposure to a corresponding picture), although to a lesser extent than by intramodal (i.e. word word) priming; the magnitude of intermodal priming was insensitive to strategy; and, as with priming from spoken to printed language, the major impact of word frequency occurred under intermodal, as distinct from intramodal, conditions. Following Scarborough, Gerard, and Cortese (1979), a fifth experiment compared word identification and episodic recognition. Intramodal performance was superior in word identification, whereas intermodal (i.e. picture word) performance was superior in episodic recognition, a reversal which suggests that episodic recognition involves access to a distinct memory trace.